Garrick Ohlsson is a big pianist. He has big hands, a big reputation, a big repertoire. And he plays big – really big. He certainly did so in his recital at Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Ohlsson began with Beethoven’s Sonata in A major, Op.2, No.2 – a fleet, witty, inventive work. Mr. Ohlsson played with clarity and incisiveness, as usual. Beethoven asks for contrasts between loud and soft, and Mr. Ohlsson provided them, in spades. Geez, were those louds loud! You were not listening to Lili Kraus or Clara Haskil. This sonata has sparkle and charm, but from Mr. Ohlsson it was almost titanic. It was loaded with bravura. When the first movement ended, I had the feeling it had been played by a lawn mower.

In the second movement, Mr. Ohlsson was steady of rhythm, but also a little slow. And those harsh, sudden accents were not terribly helpful. And the chords! So big! This might have been Liszt’s Sonata. The D-minor section of this movement was enormous, and also a little pounded.

The third movement, however – the Scherzo – had grace and style. And – again, this is typical from Mr. Ohlsson -everything was sharply etched.

As for the closing Rondo, I think of it as smoothly tranquil (in the main). Mr. Ohlsson thinks differently: Much of his playing was not legato, but detached. This interpretation had some of the eccentricity – or let’s say individuality – of Glenn Gould. And Mr. Ohlsson is, as a rule, rather straight in his interpretations. Nonetheless, he was persuasive. The middle section was a big, big storm. A forte was fortissimo, and ff was more like fff, if not ffff.

I’m sorry, but I can’t quite adjust to that, in Op. 2, No. 2 – save it for the “Hammerklavier,” baby.

And yet, Mr. Ohlsson is a serious technician – an awesome technician – and a worthy musician. Just about everything he does has command.

He next turned to another great piece – and a bigger piece – Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. This, Mr. Ohlsson should eat up.

In the theme itself, he was a little bit fussy (as in his staccatos, or detachedness). And in the first variation, he was big already: He wasted no time, gave himself little room for expansion. Mr. Ohlsson did many things well in the course of this work. When Brahms lets the pianist let ‘er rip, Mr. Ohlsson let ‘er rip. And yet some of those variations needed more character. One in B-flat minor was short on its haunting beauty. Another variation was short on its rippling joy. And so on. The pages building to the final variation should have tremendous suspense, and they did not. And that final variation should bring huge, exultant release – it did not, really, in part because Mr. Ohlsson had been so big before.

Also, Mr. Ohlsson’s preference for detachedness gave the whole work a somewhat mechanical quality.

And yet he handled the big, knotty fugue as though it were a child’s first scale. Amazing.

After intermission, Mr. Ohlsson turned to Czech music, and nothing but Czech music. He introduced, to many of us, the Sonata by Oldrich Frantisek Korte. Who? Mr. Korte was born in Salaon-Vah, in 1926; he wrote this sonata in the early 1950s. David Wright’s excellent program notes informed us that Mr. Korte has held several jobs: photographer, movie actor, journalist, trade union official. We also learned that, at one point, he was “forbidden to buy a particular vacation home because it was located too close to the West German border.” Ah, those were the days.

The Korte Sonata is a big-handed piece, and Mr. Ohlsson is good at those. (Famous big-handed composers include Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Gershwin. And, of course, all of those were composer-pianists.) Mr. Korte’s Sonata is eclectic, embodying many styles. I thought of Busoni, Debussy, Scriabin. There are even Baroque sounding stretches, very winsome. One had the impression of a virtuoso pianist – interested but unschooled in composition – improvising.

Shortly after Mr. Ohlsson began the second (and final) movement, a cell phone rang. Groans and scolding. It rang again. Louder groans and scolding. Mr. Ohlsson stopped playing. I believe he was bothered as much by the reaction to the cell phone as by the cell phone itself. Furthermore, I was reminded that, in a previous Avery Fisher Hall recital, Mr. Ohlsson stopped for a hearing aid.

Anyway, he began the second movement again, and continued without incident. The Korte Sonata is not a great work, and perhaps not even a good work, but it deserves a hearing, and Mr. Ohlsson makes a fine advocate.

He ended his program with four of Smetana’s Czech Dances, played with affinity and panache. Boy, was that furiant furious. And, oh, yes: Mr. Ohlsson stopped for another cell phone – giving a serious, long glare. (Couldn’t the guy have checked when the other one went off?)

I should note that Avery Fisher Hall is usually considered an uncongenial place for a piano recital, or any recital – not just because of cell phones (which ring everywhere), but because of the size and acoustical nature of the place. Frankly, Avery Fisher Hall seemed too small for Garrick Ohlsson. Giants Stadium might be about right.

***

About half an hour after Mr. Ohlsson stopped for that second cell phone, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center presented a Wagner premiere. But more on that in a moment.

This concert – across the way from Avery Fisher at Alice Tully Hall – began with a piece by Durufle. We know this composer chiefly for his organ and choral music, but this is “Prelude, Recitatif et Variations” for flute, viola, and piano, written in 1928, when Durufle was in his mid-20s.

Speaking of young musicians, Anna Polonsky was the pianist here, and she played very well, as she conditions you to expect. Russian-born, and a product of the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Ms. Polonsky is poised, skillful, and sensitive. In the Durufle, she produced interesting colors, in part because she pedaled wisely.

Paul Neubauer was the violist, providing his elegant sound, and singing tastefully. The flutist, Ransom Wilson, did not enter with his best sound, and he did not play as smoothly as he can. But he was, of course, adequate.

Overall, Durufle’s piece did not seduce or enchant as it might have; the performance did not have the focus or cohesion for that. But these players in no sense failed (except to seduce or enchant).

Next we had the New York premiere of “Four Settings” for soprano and a seven-man chamber ensemble, by Melinda Wagner, an American composer born in 1957. Ms. Wagner won the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago, but that should not be held against her. Her songs set a poem by Robert Desnos, a Frenchman who died in Theresienstadt; a poem by Denise Levertov (1923-97), who came from England to America as a young woman; and two poems by Emily Dickinson: “Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers” and “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!”

These songs are varied, involving, and often arresting. They are written with a fairly free hand, and can seem Impressionistic. The Levertov song is intelligently tumultuous. “Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers” has a creepy stateliness, not unlike the poem itself. “Wild Nights …” is effective. (Do you know Lee Hoiby’s “Wild Nights …”? It is a wonderfully rhapsodic song, sung by Leontyne Price on a zillion of her recitals.)

Ms. Wagner has handled the chamber ensemble shrewdly. It would seem difficult – and this may be too bad – to fashion an alternative piano accompaniment (one that would do justice to the work). That rules out “Four Settings” for recitals.

I sometimes say that my highest accolade for a new piece is to declare that I would like to hear it again. “Four Settings,” I would indeed like to hear again.

The soprano on this occasion was the one for whom the songs were written: Christine Brandes. Her singing was fearless, and it needed to be, in this dauntingly exposed music. The songs require a big range, and include many tough intervals. Happily, Ms. Brandes was not afraid to be as “operatic” as she had to be. On some notes, she was a little low – e.g., flat – and she pronounced some words oddly: such as “surrender.” But she has given the Wagner work a real lift.

The second half of the program contained one work, Mozart’s clarinet quintet. It featured David Shifrin, who is simply one of the finest instrumentalists in the world. This clarinetist – until recently the artistic director of the Chamber Music Society – may not have brought his A game on this afternoon. (I’m borrowing Tiger Woods’s language.) But he was plenty good, a model of musicianship – a musicianship that is both natural and learned.

Alongside Mr. Shifrin were the violin playing Kavafian sisters, Ani and Ida; Mr. Neubauer; and Fred Sherry, cello. Mozart’s first movement was slightly affected, needing a freer flow. A. Kavafian, in particular, was enjoying some of Mozart’s phrases a little too much. And, as a general proposition, this performance could have been tighter. In the last movement, for example, the sisters were not exactly crisply together.

Mr. Shifrin is never guilty of affectation. And he certainly did not gild Mozart’s lily. He reminds me of his predecessor as principal of the Cleveland Orchestra, Robert Marcellus. Marcellus’s Mozart was no-nonsense (although of course supremely musical); so is Mr. Shifrin’s. He sang the Larghetto simply and sublimely. And here was something amusing: In the final movement, Mr. Shifrin suffered a very rare technical glitch. In the time-honored tradition of wind and brass players, he looked wonderingly at his instrument.

Beautiful.